“Funny world,” thought Patience. She shrugged her beautiful young

shoulders cynically, and went forth to do her duty by the guests. As she

passed out of the front door to join some one of the scattered groups on

the lawns, she heard a voice which made her pause and tap her forehead

with her finger. It was a rich deep voice, with a vibration in it, and a

light suggestion of brogue. She turned to the drawing-room, whence it

came. A man in riding clothes was talking to Mrs. Peele, who was

listening with a bend of the head that meant much to Patience’s trained

eye. The man had an athletic nervous figure, suggestive of great

virility and suppressed force, although it was carried with a fine

repose. The thick black hair on his large finely shaped head glinted

here and there with silver. His profile was aquiline, delicately cut and

very strong, his mouth, under the slight moustache, neither full nor

thin, and both mobile and firm, the lips beautifully cut. The eyes,

deeply set, were not large, and were of an indefinite blue grey, but

piercing, restless, kind, and humourous. There were lines about them,

and a deep line on one side of his mouth. His lean face had a touch of

red on its olive. He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and

forty.

Patience recognised him and trembled a little, but with excitement, not

passion. She had understood herself for once when she had said that in

her present conditions she was incapable of love. Beverly Peele would

have to go down among the memories before his wife could shake her

spirit free, and turn with swept brain and clear eyes to even a

conception of the love whose possibilities dwelt within her.

But she was fully alive to the picturesqueness of meeting this man once

more, and suddenly became possessed of the spirit of adventure. There

must be some sort of sequel to that old romance.

She withdrew to the shadow of a tree, where she could watch the

drawing-room through the window. Burr entered, slapped the visitor on

the back, and bore him away to the dining-room, presumably to have a

drink. When they returned, Mr. Peele was in the room. He shook hands

with the stranger more heartily than was his wont. In a few moments he

crossed over to the library, and Patience, seeing that her early hero

would be held in conversation for some time to come, followed her

father-in-law and asked casually who the visitor was.

“Oh, that’s Bourke, Garan Bourke, the legal idol,” sarcastically, “of

Westchester County. In truth he’s a brilliant lawyer enough, and one of

the rising men at the New York bar, although he will go off his head

occasionally and take criminal cases. I don’t forgive him that, if he

_is_ always successful. However, we all have our little fads. I suppose

he can’t resist showing his power over a jury. I heard an enthusiastic

youngster assert the other day that Bourke whips up a jury’s grey matter

into one large palpitating batter, then moulds it with the tips of his

fingers while the jury sits with mouth open and spinal marrow paralysed.

Personally, I like him well enough, and rather hoped he and Hal would

fancy each other. But he doesn’t seem to be a marrying man. You’d better

go over and meet him. He’ll just suit you.”

Patience returned to her post. Burr had disappeared, Bourke was talking

to half a dozen women. In a few moments he rose to go. Patience went

hastily across the lawns to the narrow avenue of elms by the driveway.

No two were billing and cooing in its shadows, and Beverly was in bed

with a nervous headache.

The moon was large and very brilliant. One could have read a newspaper

as facilely as by the light of an electric pear. As Bourke rode to the

main avenue a woman came toward him. He had time to think her very

beautiful and of exceeding grace before she surprised him by laying her

hand on his horse’s neck.

“Well?” she said, looking up and smiling as he reined in.

“Well?” he stammered, lifting his hat.

“I am too heavy to ride before you now.”

He stared at her perplexedly, but made no reply.

“Still if I were up a tree—literally, you know—and a band of terrible

demons were shouting at a man beside a corpse—”

“What?” he said. “Not you?—not you? That homely fascinating little

girl—no, it cannot be possible—”

“Oh, yes,” lifting her chin, coquettishly. “I have improved, and grown,

you see. I was more than delighted when I saw you through the window. It

was rather absurd, but I disliked the idea of going in to meet you

conventionally—”

He laid his hand strongly on hers, and she treated him with a passivity

denied to Latimer Burr.

“I am going to tie up my horse and talk to you a while, may I?” America

and the law had not crowded all the romance out of his Irish brain, and

he was keenly alive to the adventure. He had forgotten her name long

since, and it did not occur to him that this lovely impulsive girl was

the property of another man; but although he had lived too long, nor yet

long enough, to lose his heart to the first flash of magnetism from a

pretty woman, yet his blood was thrilled by the commingling of

spirituality and deviltry in the face of this high-bred girl who cared

to give the flavour of romance to their acquaintance. He saw that she

was clever, and he had no intention of making a fool of himself; but he

was quite willing to follow whither she cared to lead. And it was night

and the moon was high; the leaves sang in a crystal sea; a creek

murmured somewhere; the frogs chanted their monotonous recitative to the

hushed melodies and discords of the night world; the deep throbbing of

steamboats came from the river.

He tied his horse to a tree, and they entered the avenue.

“You told me that it was a small world, and that we should probably meet

again,” she said; “and I never doubted that we should.”

“Oh, I never did either,” he exclaimed. He was racking his brains to

recall the conversation which had passed between them a half dozen years

ago, and for the life of him could not remember a word; but he was a man

of resource.

“I am glad that it is at night,” he continued, “even if the scene is not

so charming as Carmel Valley from that old tower. How beautiful the

ocean looked from there, and what a jolly ride we had in the pine

woods!”

She understood perfectly, and grinned in the dark.

“Ah! I remember I gave you some advice,” he exclaimed with suspicious

abruptness. “I thought afterward that it was great presumption on my

part.”

“I wonder if you had an ideal of your own in mind when you spoke?”

“An ideal?” He cursed his memory and floundered hopelessly. Even his

Irish wit for once deserted him.

“Oh, I hoped you had not forgotten it. Why, I have made a little ‘Night

Thoughts’ of what you said, and it has been one of the strongest forces

in my development. Shall I repeat it to you?”

“Oh, please.” He was blushing with pleasure, but sore perplexed.

And she repeated his comments and advice, word for word.

“Is it possible that you remember all that? I am deeply flattered.” And

he was, in fact.

“What more natural than that I should remember? I was a lonely little

waif, full of dreams and vague ideals, and with much that was terrible

in my actual life. I had never talked with a young man before—a man of

seventy was my only experience of your sex, barring boys, that don’t

count. And you swooped down into my life in the most picturesque manner

possible, and talked as no one in my little world was capable of

talking. So, you see, it is not so remarkable that I retain a vivid

impression of you and your words. I was frightfully in love with you.”

“Oh—were you? Were you?” He was very much at sea. It was true that she

had paid him the most subtle tribute one mind can pay to another, but

her very audacity would go to prove that she was a brilliant coquette.

He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he was still a little afraid

of her. He took refuge on the broad impersonal shore of flirtation,

where the boat is ever dancing on the waves.

“If you felt obliged to use the past tense you might have left that last

unsaid.”

“Oh, there are a thousand years between fifteen and twenty-one. I am

quite another person, as you see.”

“You are merely an extraordinary child developed; and you have carried

your memory along with you.”

“Oh, yes, the memory is there, and the tablets are pretty full; but

never mind me. I want to know if your ideals are as strong now as I am

sure they were then—if any one in this world manages to hold onto his

ideals when circumstances don’t happen to coddle them.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t thought much about

them since that night. I doubt if I’d given too much thought to them

before. Deep in every man’s brain is an ideal of some sort, I imagine,

but it is seldom he sits down and analyses it out. He knows when he’s

missed it and locked the gates behind him, and perhaps, occasionally, he

knows when he’s found it—or something approximating it. We are all the

victims of that terrible thing called Imagination, which, I sometimes

think, is the sudden incursion of a satirical Deity. I have not

married—why, I can hardly say. Perhaps because there has been some

vague idea that if I waited long enough I might meet the one woman; but

partly, also, because I have had no very great desire to marry. I keep

bachelor’s hall over on the Sound, and the life is very jolly and free

of small domestic details. There are so many women that give you almost

everything you want—or at least four or five will make up a very good

whole—that I have never yet faced the tremendous proposition of going

through life expecting one woman to give me everything my nature and

mind demand. But there are such women, I imagine,” he added abruptly,

trying to see her face in one of the occasional splashes of moonlight.

“A very clever woman—Mrs. Lafarge; perhaps you know her—said to me the

other day, that many men and women of strong affinity took a good deal

of spirituality with them into marriage, but soon forgot all about

it—matrimony is so full of reiterant details, and everything becomes so

matter of course. Do you think that is true?”

“I am afraid it is. The imagination wears blunt. The Deity is sending

his electricity elsewhere—to those still prowling about the shores of

the unknown. Perhaps if one could keep the danger in mind—if one were

unusually clever—I don’t know. I fancy civilisation will get to that

point after a while. Unquestionably the companionship of man and woman,

when no essentials are lacking, is the one supremely satisfying thing in

life. If we loved each other, for instance—on such a night—it seems to

me that we are in tune—”

“But we don’t love each other, as it happens, and we met about three

quarters of an hour ago. We’ll probably hate each other by daylight.”

“Oh, I hope not,” he said, accepting the ice-water. “But tell me what

your ideals were. I hope they have proved more stable than mine.”

“Oh, mine were a sort of yearning for some unseen force in nature; I

suppose the large general force from which love is a projection. Every

mortal, except the purely material, the Beverly Peele type, for

instance, has an affinity with something in the invisible world, an

uplifting of the soul. Christianity satisfies the great mass, hence its

extraordinary hold. Do you suppose the real link between the soul of man

and the soul of nature will ever be established?”

He laughed a little, piqued, but amused. “You are very clever,” he said,

“and this is just the hour and these are just the circumstances for

impersonal abstractions. Well—perhaps the link will be established when

we have lived down this civilisation and entered upon another which has

had drilled out of it all the elements which plant in human nature the

instincts of cupidity and sordidness and envy and political corruption,

and all that goes to make us the aliens from nature that we are. About

all that keeps us in touch with her now are our large vices. There is

some tremendous spiritual force in the Universe which projects itself

into us, making man and nature correlative. What wonder that

man—particularly an imaginative and intelligent child—should be

affected and played upon by this Mystery? What wonder that the heathens

have gods, and the civilised a symbol called the Lord God?—a concrete

something which they can worship, and upon which unburden the load of

spirituality which becomes oppressive to matter? It is for the same

reason that women fall in love and marry earlier than men, who have so

many safety-valves. On the other hand, men who have a great deal of

emotional imagination and who can neither love nor accept religion take

refuge in excess. It is all a matter of temperament. Cold-blooded

people—those that have received a meagre share of this great vital

force pervading the Universe, which throws a continent into convulsions

or a human being into ecstasy—such, for instance, are religious only

because their ancestors were,—their brain is pointed that way. Their

blood has nothing to do with it, as is the more general case—for

Christianity is pre-eminently sensuous.”

“What do you suppose will take its place? The world is bound to become

wholly civilised in time; but still human nature will demand some sort

of religion (which is another word for ideality), some sort of

lodestar.”

“A superlative refinement, I think; a perfected æstheticism which shall

by no means eradicate the strong primal impulses; which shall, in fact,

create conditions of higher happiness than now exist. Do we not enjoy

all arts the more as they approach perfection? Does not a nude appeal

with more subtle strength to the senses the more exquisite its beauty,

the more entire its freedom from coarseness? When people strive to place

human nature on a level with what is highest in art and in nature

itself, the true religion will have been discovered. So far, man himself

is infinitely below what man has achieved. It is hard to believe that

genius is the result of any possible combination of heredity. It would

seem that it must, like its other part, imagination, be the direct and

more permanent indwelling of the supreme creative force—as if the

creator would lighten his burden occasionally, and shakes off rings

which float down to torment favoured brains.”

“I always knew that I should love to hear you talk,” murmured Patience.

His hand closed over hers. He drew it through his arm and held it

against his heart, which was beating irregularly.

“And I haven’t talked so much nor such stuff to a woman since God made

me. I believe that I could talk to you through twenty years. You have

said enough to-night to make me hope that our minds have been running

along the same general lines. Tell me—honestly—no coquetry—has what I

said that night had the slightest effect in your development?”

She told the tale of the day in the crystal woods, giving a sufficiently

comprehensive sketch of the events which had led up to it to make her

the more keenly interesting to the man whose brain was beginning to

whirl a little.

“If you had come at that moment,” she concluded, “I would have gone with

you to the end of the earth. I have a pretty strong personality, but

there was a good deal of wax in me then, and if you could have gotten it

between your hands I think that what you moulded would have closely

resembled your ideal—the impression you had already made had so

strongly coloured and trained my imagination. But,” she continued

hastily, and glancing anxiously to the far distant end of the avenue,

“you see my life changed immediately after that, and I went into the

world and became hard and bitter and cynical. I have no ideals left, and

I do not want any—I have seen too much—”

“Hush!” he said passionately, “I do not believe a word of it. Why, that

was not two years ago, and you are still a young girl. Have you loved

any one else?” he asked abruptly, his voice less steady.

“No!”

He was too excited to note the meaning of her emphasis. He was only

conscious that he was very close to a beautiful woman who allured him in

all ways as no one woman had ever done before.

“You are full of a girl’s cynicism,” he said; “you have seen just enough

to make you think you know the world—to accept the superficial for the

real. You—you yourself are an ideal. All you need is to know yourself,

and I am going to undertake the task of teaching you—do you hear? If I

fail—if I have made a mistake—if it is only the night and your beauty

that have gone to my head—well and good; but I shall have the

satisfaction of having tried—of knowing—”

“No, no! No, no!” she said. “You must not come here again. I do not want

to see you again—”

“Nonsense! You have some sentimental foolish idea in your head,—or

perhaps you are engaged to some man who can give you great wealth and

position. I shall not regard that, either. If I feel to you by daylight

as I do now, I’ll have you—do you understand?”

Patience opened her lips to tell him the truth, then cynically made up

her mind to let matters take their course. At the same time she was

bitterly resentful that she should feel as she did, not as she had once

dreamed of feeling for this man.

“Very well,” she said, “I shall be here for a while.”

“And I shall see you in the course of a day or two. I’m going now.

Good-night.” He let her arm slip from under his, but held her hand

closely. “And even if it so happened that I never did see you again, I

should thank you for the glimpse you have given me of a woman I hardly

dared dream existed.”

When he had gone she anathematised fate for a moment, then went back to

her guests.

XII

Latimer Burr was evidently a man upon whom rebuff sat lightly. The next

morning he came suddenly upon Patience in a dark corner, and tried to

kiss her. Whenever the opportunity offered he held her hand, and once,

to her infinite disgust, he planted his foot squarely on hers under the

dinner table. A few hours later they happened to be alone in one of the

small reception-rooms.

“Look here,” exclaimed Patience, wrathfully, “will you let me alone?”

“No, I won’t,” he said good-naturedly. “Jove! but you are a beauty!”

She wore a gown of white mull and lace, trimmed with large knots of

dark-blue velvet. She had been talking all the evening with Mr. Peele,

Mr. Field, and Burr, and was somewhat excited. Her lips were very pink,

her eyes very bright and dark. She held her head with a young triumph in

beauty and the intellectual tribute of clever men.

“Hal would be delighted. She has always wanted me to become the

fashion.”

“You never will be that, for there are not enough brainy men in society

to appreciate you. If all were like myself, you would be wearied with

the din of admiration—”

“There’s nothing like having a good opinion of oneself.”

“Why not? I don’t set up to be an intellectual man—intellectual men are

out of date; but I’m a brainy man, and I’d like to know how I’m to help

being aware of the fact. I certainly don’t claim to be pretty, so you

can’t say I’m actually wallowing in conceit.”

Patience was forced to laugh. “Oh, you’d do very well if you’d exercise

as much sense in regard to women as you do to affairs. Just answer me

one question, will you? Are you so amazingly fascinating that women have

the habit of succumbing at the end of the second interview?”

“I never set up to be an ass.”

“But your manner is quite assured. You seem very much surprised that I

don’t tumble into your arms and say ‘Thank you.’ Oh, you New York men

are so funny!”

“Well, answer me one question—you don’t love your husband, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you like me?”

“I would if you wouldn’t make such an idiot of yourself. You certainly

are very agreeable to talk to.”

He came closer, his lids falling. The fine repose of his manner was a

trifle ruffled. “Do you love anybody else?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“Then let me love you.”

“I shall not.”

“Then if you don’t love your husband and you like me and will not let me

love you, you must have a lover.”

Patience burst into brief hilarity.

“Is that the logic of your kind?”

“A beautiful woman that does not love her husband always loves another

man.”

“Or is willing to be loved by the first man that happens to have no

other affair on hand.”

“You have said that you like me.”

“I didn’t say I loved you!”

“I’d make you!”

“Oh!” with a deep contempt he was incapable of understanding, “you

couldn’t. But tell me another thing; I’m very curious. Has it never

occurred to you that a woman must be wooed, that it is somewhat

necessary to arouse sentiment and feeling in her before she is willing

to advance one step? Why, you and your kind demand her off-hand in a way

that is positively funny. What has become of all the old traditions?”

“Oh, bother,” he said. “Life is too short to waste time on old-fashioned

nonsense. If a man wants a woman he says so, and if she’s sensible and

likes him she meets him half way. Men and women of the world know what

they want.”

“That is all there is to love then? It no longer means anything else

whatever?”

“Oh—you are all wrong. If you were not a spiritual woman I wouldn’t

cross the room to win you. One can buy the other sort. It is your

spirituality, your intellectuality, that fascinates me as much as your

beauty.”

“What do you know about spirituality?” she said contemptuously. “I don’t

like to hear you speak the word. You desecrate it.”

He flushed purple. “There are few things I don’t understand—and a good

deal better than you do, perhaps.”

“You have a clever man’s perception, that is all. Association with all

sorts of women has taught you the difference between them. But what

could you give a spiritual woman? Nothing. You have not a shrunken

kernel of soul. The sensual envelope is too thick; your brain too

crowded with the thousand and one petty experiences of material life.

You are as ingenuous as all fast men, for the women you have spent your

life running after make no demands upon subtlety—”

“Take care,” he said angrily; “you are going too far. I tell you I have

as much soul as any man living.”

“Perhaps. I doubt if any man has much. Men give women nothing, as far as

I can see. If we want companionship there seems nothing to do but to

descend to your level and grovel with you.”

“I would never make you grovel. I would reverence—”

“Oh, rot!” she cried, stamping her foot. “What a fool—and worse—the

average woman must be. You have no idea how ingenuously you are giving

away the women of society. And soul! The idea of a man who pretends to

love the woman he is engaged to and is making love to another, and that

her sister-in-law and most intimate friend, claiming to have a soul!

Have you no sense of humour? I say nothing about honour, as I wish to be

understood, if possible; but you are clever enough to see the ridiculous

in most things—Please don’t walk over me. There is plenty of room. And

the windows are open, you know—”

“Yes, and I am here,” cried a furious voice, and Beverly sprang into the

room.

Patience stepped back with a faint exclamation. Burr turned white.

Beverly was shaking with rage. His face was almost black; there were

white flecks on his nostrils.

“I kept quiet,” he articulated, “to hear every word. You dog!” to Burr.

“I may be pretty bad, but I’d never do what you have done. And as for

you,” he shook his fist at his wife, “you were only leading him on. If I

could only have held myself in another moment I’d have seen you in his

arms. Get out of this house,” he roared, “both of you. You’ll never

marry my sister. I’m going to tell her this minute—”

Burr sprang forward and caught him by the collar; but Beverly was not a

coward. He turned, flinging out his fist, and the two men grappled.

Patience closed the door and glanced out of the window. No one was near.

Voices floated up from the cliffs. Burr was the more powerful man of the

two, and in a moment had flung Beverly, panting, into a chair.

“Keep him here,” said Patience, rapidly, and she left the room.

“Man is certainly still a savage, a brute,” she thought. “What is the

matter with civilisation?”

As she crossed the lawn, she met one of the servants.

“Go and find Miss Hal, and ask her to come here,” she said. A few

moments later her sister-in-law hurried up from the cliffs.

“What is it?” she called cheerily. “Has Bev had an apoplectic fit?”

“Beverly has been making a greater fool of himself than usual,” said

Patience, as the girls met, “and I want to see you before he does. I was

standing in one of the reception-rooms talking to Mr. Burr after Mr.

Field and Mr. Peele had gone out, and he had on all his manner and was

telling me how beautiful I was, in his usual after dinner style, when

Beverly leaped through the window like the wronged husband in the

melodrama and accused us of making love. He threatened to come and tell

you, and he and Mr. Burr wrestled like two prize-fighters. If Beverly

were put on the witness stand he’d be obliged to admit that Mr. Burr had

not so much as touched my hand. I suppose you will believe me?”

Hal gave her light laugh. “Certainly, my dear, certainly; although if I

were a man I should fall in love with you myself. I wouldn’t bet on

Latimer, but I would on you—so don’t worry your little head. Do you

suppose I expect a man with that mouth and those eyes to be faithful to

me? Still, I must say that I should have given him credit for more

decency than to make love to my sister-in-law—”

“He didn’t! I swear he didn’t.”

“Oh, of course not! Nor will he make love to every pretty woman he finds

himself alone with for five minutes. He can’t help it, poor thing. Let

us go and talk to the gentlemen.”

As they entered the little room she exclaimed airily, “Been making a

fool of yourself again, Bev? No, don’t speak. Patience has told me all

about it. I have every confidence in her and Latimer. Better go and take

a spin with Tammany. Latimer, you really must mend your manners. They’re

too good. From a distance a stranger would really think you were making

love when you are swearing at the heat. Now, come down to the Tea House.

Good-night, Bevvy dear.”

And she went off between her lover and her sister-in-law, leaving her

brother to swear forth his righteous indignation.

That night Patience opened the door of her husband’s room for the first

time. Beverly, who had just entered, was so astonished that the wrath he

had carefully nourished fell like quicksilver under a cool wave, and he

stared at her without speaking.

“I wish to tell you,” said his wife, “that you were entirely justified

in being angry to-night. I could have suppressed Burr by a word, but I

chose to lead him on to gratify my curiosity. Hal wishes to marry him,

and I am determined that she shall. If I had admitted the truth to her

or permitted you to enlighten her, her self-respect would have forced

her to break the engagement. That would have been absurd, for the match

is exactly what she wants, and she is not marrying with illusions. But

you have been treated inconsiderately, and I apologise for my share in

it. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course I’ll forgive you,” said Beverly, eagerly. “I wasn’t angry

with you, anyhow—only with that scoundrel. But I never believed you’d

do this. Do you care for me a little?”

Patience averted her face that she might not see the expression on his.

Despite her loathing of him she gave him a certain measure of pity. With

all the preponderance of the savage in him and the limitations of his

intelligence he had his own capacity for suffering, and to-night he

stood before her crushed under the sudden reaction, his eyes full of the

dumb appeal of shrinking brutes.

“If we are going to live peacefully don’t let us discuss that subject,”

she said gently. “We have both missed it, and I sometimes think that you

are more to be pitied than I am. However, I shall not flirt—I promise

you that. Good-night.”

That was the last of Mr. Burr’s illegal love-making at Peele Manor. He

had had a fright and a lesson, and he forgot neither.

XIII

“Garan Bourke is coming to dinner to-night,” said Hal, the next day.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to get him; he never goes anywhere;

but he half promised mamma, when he called the other night, that he’d

come some day this week, and he wrote yesterday, saying he’d dine with

us to-day. I want you to meet him. He is awfully clever, and when he

talks I want to close my eyes and listen to his voice. If the dear girls

ever get the vote and do jury duty, all he’ll have to do will be to

quote law. He needn’t take the trouble to sum up. His voice will do the

business every time.”

Patience, in a French gown of black chiffon, was very beautiful that

night. She did not go down to dinner until every one was seated. Bourke

sat next to Mrs. Peele. Her own chair was near the end of the opposite

side of the long table. For a time she did not look at Bourke. When she

did she met his eyes; and knew by their expression that some one had

told him she was the wife of Beverly Peele.

After dinner he went with Mr. Peele and Burr into the library. Patience

was about to follow a party of young people down to the bluff, when Mr.

Field drew her arm firmly through his.

“You are not going to desert your court?” he said. “Why, you don’t

suppose I come up here to talk to Peele, do you? If you go out with

those boys I’ll never come here again.” And he led her into the library.

It was nearly twelve o’clock when she found herself alone with Bourke.

The others had gone out, one by one. She had made no attempt to follow

them. She sat with defiant eyes and inward trepidation. Bourke regarded

her with narrowed eyes and twitching nostrils.

“So you are married?” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“And you deliberately made a fool of me?”

“No—no—I did nothing deliberately that night—no—I acted on impulse.

And all that I said was quite true. Of course I should have told you—”

“But it would have spoiled your comedy.”

“No—no—don’t think that. I see that I was dishonest—I am not making

excuses—I never thought you’d become really interested—”

“I am not breaking my heart. Don’t let that worry you. The mere fact of

your dishonesty is quite enough to break the spell—for you are not the

woman I imagined you to be. I was merely worshipping an ideal for the

hour. Do you love your husband?”

“No.”

“Then you are a harlot,” he said, deliberately. “It only needed that.”

He rose to his feet and looked contemptuously at her scarlet face. “At

all events it was an amusing episode,” he said. “Good-night.”

XIV

It was a matter of comment before the summer was over, both among the

guests at Peele Manor and the neighbours, that Mr. and Mrs. Beverly

Peele had come to the parting of the ways. As the young man’s

infatuation was as notable as his wife’s indifference, he received the

larger share of sympathy. The married men championed Patience and

expressed it in their time-honoured fashion; and although they worried

her she looked forward with terror to the winter: she would willingly

have taken them all to board and trusted to their wives to keep them in

order.

Beverly had confided his woes long since to his mother. She declined to

discuss the subject with her daughter-in-law, but treated her with a

chill severity. Fortunately they were gay that summer, and Patience had

much to do. Hal and May were absorbed in preparations for their wedding,

and the duties of hostess fell largely on her shoulders.

Late in the fall there was a double wedding under the medallion of Peele

the First. Immediately thereafter May went to Cuba; and Hal to Europe,

to pay a series of visits. Mrs. Peele continued to entertain, and was

obliged to confess that her daughter-in-law was very useful, and in

deportment above reproach. Outwardly Patience looked almost as cold a

woman of the world as herself, and gave no evidence of the storms

brewing within; but one day she hung out a signal. Mrs. Peele announced

that she should go to town on the first of December. Patience followed

her into her bedroom and closed the door.

“May I speak to you a moment alone?” she asked.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Peele, frigidly. “Will you sit down?”

She herself took an upright chair, and suggested, Patience thought, a

judge on his bench.

“I want to go to town with you this winter.”

“I should be happy to have my dear son with me, and I will not deny that

you are a great help to me; but Beverly is as strongly opposed as ever

to city life. I asked him myself to go down for the winter, but he

refused. He is one of Nature’s own children, and loves the country.”

“He certainly is very close to Nature in several of her moods. But I

wish to go whether he does or not.”

“You would leave your husband?” Mrs. Peele spoke with meditative scorn.

“It will be better for both of us not to be shut up here together for

another winter. I—I will not answer for the consequences.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You can take it as you choose.”

“Do you not love my son?”

“No, I do not.”

“And you are not ashamed to make such an admission?”

“Would you prefer to have me lie about it?”

“It is your duty to love your husband.”

“That proposition is rather too absurd for argument, don’t you think so?

Will you persuade Beverly to let me go with you to town?”

“I shall not. You should be glad, overjoyed, to have such a husband. You

should feel grateful,” she added, unburdening her spite in the vulgarity

which streaks high and low, “that he loved you well enough to overlook

your lack of family and fortune—”

But Patience had left the room.

That evening she went to her father-in-law and stated her case. She

spoke calmly, although she was bitter and sore and worried. “I cannot

stay here with Beverly this winter,” she continued. “I need not explain

any farther. Mrs. Peele will not consent to my going to town with her.

But couldn’t I live abroad? I could do so on very little. I should care

nothing for society if I could live my life by myself. I should be quite

contented with books and freedom. But I cannot stay here with Beverly

alone again.”

Mr. Peele shook his head. “It wouldn’t do. I understand; but it would

only result in scandal, and I don’t like scandal. We have never gone to

pieces, like so many great New York families. Our women have been proud

and conservative, and have not used their position to cloak their

amours. I have perfect confidence in you, of course; but if you went to

Europe and left Beverly raging here, people would say that you had gone

to meet another man. Moreover, it would do no good. Beverly would follow

you. And he will give you no cause for divorce: he has the cunning

peculiar to the person of ugly disposition and limited mentality. No,

try to stand it. Remember that all the humours of human nature have

their limit. Beverly will become indifferent in time. Then he will let

you come to us. I intend to take a rest in a year or two and go abroad,

and I shall be glad to have you with us. I do not mind telling you that

you are the brightest young woman I have ever known—and Mr. Field has

said the same thing.”

But Patience was not in a mood to bend her neck to flattery. She shook

her head gloomily.

“If I have any brain, cannot you see that I suffer the more? Mr. Peele,

I cannot stay here with Beverly! Do you know that sometimes I have felt

that I could kill him? I am afraid of myself.”

“Hush! Hush! Don’t say such things. You excitable young women are

altogether too extravagant in your way of expressing yourselves. Words

carry a great deal farther than you have any idea of—take an old

lawyer’s word for it. Now try to stand it. In fact, you must stand it.

I’ll do all I can. I’ll leave a standing order with Brentano to send you

all the new books, and I’ll insist upon your coming up every week or so

to have some amusement. But for God’s sake make no scandal.”

XV

On the first of December Patience and Beverly were alone once more. The

weather was fine, and Beverly temporarily absorbed in breaking in a colt

on his private track. Patience spent the first day wandering about the

woods, tormented by her thoughts. She remembered with passionate regret

the old crystal woods where she had been a girl of dreams and ideals.

Her ideals were in ruins. The hero of her dreams had told her a hideous

truth that had made her hate him and more abundantly despise herself.

She longed ardently to get away to a mountain top, a hundred miles from

civilisation. Nature had been her friend in the old Californian days,

and the green or white beauty of her second environment had satisfied

her in that peaceful intermediate time. But Westchester County, although

exquisitely pretty, lacked grandeur and the suggestion of colossal

throes in remote ages with which every stone in California is eloquent.

That was what she wanted now. But there was no prospect of getting away.

Did she have enthusiasm enough left to leave summarily she had little

money. She was very extravagant, and left the larger part of her

quarterly allowance with New York shops and milliners and dressmakers;

but she knew that the end was approaching, and listlessly awaited it.

Heavy with rebellious disgust she returned to the house and went

mechanically to the library. For a while she did not read; she felt no

impulse to do so. But after a time she took down a book in desperation,

a volume of a new edition de luxe of “Childe Harold.” She had not read

it during her brief Byronic fever, and had not opened the poet since.

Gradually she forgot self. She began with the third canto, and when she

had finished the fourth she discovered that her spirits were lighter, a

weight had risen from her brain. She had always regarded “notes” as an

evidence of the amateur reader, but to-day she scrawled on a fly-leaf of

Mr. Peele’s new morocco edition:—

“As the Christian goes to his God for help, the intellectual, in

hours of depression and disgust and doubt go to the great

Creators of Literature, those master minds that lift our own

temporarily above the terrible enigma of the commonplace, and

possess us to the extinction of personal meditation. Are not

these genii as worthy of deification by the higher civilisation

as was Jesus Christ—their brother—by the great illogical

suffering mass of mankind? ‘Faith shall make ye whole,’ said

Christ; ‘come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden.’ ‘Develop

your brain, and I will give you self-oblivion, philosophy, and a

soul of many windows,’ say the great masters of thought and

style, the stupendous creative imaginations.”

Beverly came home in high good humour; his colt had showed his blood,

and nearly pulled him out of the break-cart. Patience endeavoured to

appear interested, and he was so pleased that the atmosphere during

dinner was quite domestic. Afterward he went to sleep on a sofa by the

library fire, and his wife read.

A week passed more placidly than Patience had expected. Beverly was

evidently under stress to make himself agreeable. His wife suspected

that he had had a long and meaning conference with his father. In truth

he was desperately afraid that she would leave him. Patience did not

know whether she hated him most when he was amiable or violent; but she

hated herself more than she hated him.

“I think I’ll go to town and see Rosita,” she thought one morning as she

awakened. “It seems to me that she is the fittest companion I could

find.”

At the breakfast-table she appeared in a tailor frock and turban, and

informed Beverly that she was going to town to pay some visits. Beverly

looked at her for a moment with black face, then dropped his eyes

without comment. He recalled his father’s advice.

“What train shall you come home in?” he asked after a moment. “I’ll go

down to the station to meet you.”

“I cannot say. I shall be back to dinner.”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye?” he asked sullenly, when she was

about to open the front door. She hesitated a moment, then raised her

face, closing her eyes, lest he should see the impulse to strike him. He

saw the hesitation and turned away with an oath, then ran after her,

flung his arms about her and kissed her. She walked down to the station

with burning face, rubbing her mouth and cheeks violently, careless of

the wide-eyed regard of two gardeners.

XVI

When she arrived at Rosita’s the maid admitted her without protest, not

recognising in this elegant young woman the countrified girl of two

years before. She left Patience in the dark drawing-room, but returned

in a moment and announced that Madame would see Mrs. Peele at once.

Patience followed the woman through the boudoir and bedroom to the

bath-room, a classic apartment of pink tiles. The tub was merely one

corner of the room walled off with tiles; and in it, covered from throat

to foot with a sheet, her head on a silken strap, lay Rosita. By her

side sat a girl in a fashionable ulster and large hat, a note-book and

pencil on her lap. Rosita looked like a dark-haired Aphrodite, and was

as fresh as a rose. A maid had just dried one pink and white hand, and

she held it out to Patience.

“Patita! Patita! Patita!” she said with her sweet drawl and accent, and

without a trace of resentment in her soft heavy eyes. “Where, where have

you been all these years? Miss Merrien, this is my oldest and dearest

friend, Mrs. Beverly Peele [she pronounced the name with visible pride].

Patita, this is Miss Merrien of the ‘Day.’ She is interviewing me.”

Patience flushed as she bent her head to the young woman, who regarded

her with conspicuous amazement, and whose nostrils quivered a little, as

if she scented a “story.” She was a pretty girl with a dark rather worn

face, a frank eye, and a nervous manner.

“Patita, sit down there just for a moment while I look at you. Then we

will go into the other room. I could not wait to see you. _Dios de mi

alma_, but you have changed, Patita _mia_. Who would ever have thought

that you would be such a beauty and such a swell. Gray cloth and

chinchilla! Just think, Miss Merrien, we used to wear sunbonnets and

copper-toed boots, and drove an old blind horse that would not go off a

walk.”

“May I put that down?” asked the girl, eagerly.

“Oh, please don’t,” exclaimed Patience. Miss Merrien’s face fell. Then

she smiled, and said good-naturedly, “All right, I won’t.”

“And now Patita is a swell,” pursued Rosita, as if no interruption had

occurred, “and I am a famous _prima donna_. Such is life. Patita, do you

know that I have two hundred thousand dollars invested?”

“Really?”

“_Si, señorita!_ Oh, my price has gone up, Patita _mia_,” and she

laughed her low delicious laugh.

Miss Merrien smiled. “A man shot himself for that laugh the other day—I

suppose you read about it,” she said.

“No, I did not. I have read the newspapers irregularly of late—the

‘stories,’ at least.”

“It is true,” said Rosita, complacently. “Oh, Patita, life is so lovely.

To think that we both had such great destinies! _Pobre_ Manuela, and

Panchita, and all the rest! _Bueno_, go into the bedroom, both of you,

and I will be there in ten minutes.”

Patience and Miss Merrien seated themselves in the white bower of velvet

and lace.

“Please do not put me into your story,” said Patience, hastily. “It

would not do—you see my husband would not like it—but we are old

friends, and I wanted to see her.”

Miss Merrien nodded intelligently. With the suspicion of her craft she

leaped to the conclusion that the fashionable young woman came to her

disreputable friend for an occasional lark.

“Oh, I promise you. If you hadn’t asked me I should though. It would

make a fine story.”

“Tell me,” said Patience abruptly, “do you like being a newspaper woman?

Is it very hard work?”

“Yes, it’s hard work,” Miss Merrien answered in some surprise; “but then

it is the most fascinating, I do believe, in the whole world. I have a

family and a home out West, and I could go back and be comfortable if I

wanted to; but I wouldn’t give up this life, with all its grind and

uncertainty, for that dead and alive existence. I only go out there once

a year to rest. I came on here for an experiment, to see a little of the

world. I had a dreadful time catching on; once I thought I’d starve, for

I was bound I wouldn’t write home for money; but I hung on and got

there. And I’m here to stay.”

“Oh, is it really so pleasant? Sometimes I wish I were a newspaper

woman.”

“You? You? I never saw anybody that looked less like one.”

“I am very strong. I am naturally pale, that is all.”

“Oh, your skin is lovely: it’s that warm dead white. I wasn’t thinking

of that. But you look like the princess that felt the pea under sixteen

mattresses.”

“One adapts one’s self easily to luxury. I have only had it two years. I

do like it certainly. Nevertheless, I’d like to be a newspaper woman.

You look tired; are you?”

“Yes, I am, Mrs. Peele. It’s hard work, if it is fascinating; for

instance, I’ve chased about this entire week for stories that haven’t

panned out for a cent. I haven’t made ten dollars. I came up here as a

last resource. La Rosita is always good-natured, and I hoped she’d have

a story for me. But all I’ve got is a crank that’s following her about

threatening to kill her if she doesn’t marry him, and that’s such a

chestnut. If I could only fake something I know she’d let it go, but my

imagination’s worn to a thread—”

The portière was pushed aside, and Rosita entered. She wore a glistening

night-robe of silk and lace and ribbon under a yellow plush bath gown.

Her dense black hair fell to her knees. She slid into bed and ordered

her maid to admit the manicure. An old woman, looking like a witch and

clad in shabby black, came in and took a chair beside the bed. The maid

brought a crystal bowl and warm water, and a golden manicure set, and

Rosita held forth her incomparable arm with its little Spanish hand. She

lay with indolent grace among the large pillows.

“You certainly are a beauty,” exclaimed Miss Merrien, enthusiastically.

Rosita smiled with much pleasure. “I love to hear a woman say that, and

I shall make good copy for many years yet. I shall not fade like most

Spanish women. Oh, I have learned many secrets.”

“I wish you hadn’t told them to me, and then I should still have them to

write about. They made a great story.”

“_Dios! Dios!_” said Rosita, plaintively, “I wish we could think of

something. I hate to send you away with nothing at all. I love to be

written about. Patita, can’t you think of something?”

“Now, Mrs. Peele,” said Miss Merrien, “let us see if you are a good

fakir. That is one of the first essentials of being a successful

newspaper woman.”

“Oh, dear! Is it? If I could fake I’d make books. I’d like that even

better. Rosita, did you ever tell the newspapers about that time I

coached you for your first appearance on any stage, and the great hit

you made?”

“What is that?” asked Miss Merrien, sharply.

“I never thought of it. Patita, you tell the story.”

This Patience did, while Miss Merrien wrote rapidly in shorthand,

pausing occasionally to exclaim with rapture.

“Oh, my good angel sent me here this morning,” she said when Patience

had finished. “I won’t mention your name, of course, but you won’t mind

my saying that you are one of the Four Hundred.”

“I don’t suppose there is any objection. I am such an obscure member of

it that no one will suspect me. Only don’t give any details.”

“Oh, I won’t, indeed I won’t.” She slipped her book into her muff and

rose to go. “You don’t know how much obliged I am. I’ll do as much for

you some day. If ever you want to be written up, let me know.”

“I never should want to be in the newspapers.”

“Oh, there’s no telling. You haven’t had a taste of it yet. Well,

good-morning,” and she went out.

Patience leaned back in her luxurious chair, and watched the old woman

polish the pretty nails. Rosita babbled, and Patience watched her face

closely. Its colouring was as fresh, its contours as perfect as ever,

but there was a faint touch of hardness somewhere, and the eyes held

more secrets than they had two years ago. They were the eyes of the

wanton. For a moment Patience forgot her surroundings. Her mind flew

back to the old days, to the rickety buggy with the two contented

innocent little girls, then, by a natural deflection, to her tower and

her dreams. She longed passionately for the old Mission, and wondered if

Solomon were still alive. Then she thought of Bourke, and came back to

the present with a shudder. The woman had gone.

“What is the matter?” asked Rosita. “Is it true—what the men say—that

you are not happy with your husband?”

“I hate him,” said Patience.

“Why don’t you get a divorce?”

“I have no grounds.”

“No grounds? Fancy a wife having no grounds!”

“I have not the slightest doubt of his faith.”

“Send him to me.”

“Oh, Rosita! How can you be so coarse?”

“No-o-o-o! You are my old friend. I would do anything for you. Think it

over, Patita _mia_.”

“I do not need to think it over. I would never do so vile a thing as

that. Have you no refinement left?”

“What earthly use would I have for refinement? Patita, you are such a

baby, and you always had ideals and things. Have you got them yet?”

“No,” said Patience, rising abruptly. “I haven’t. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Patita dear,” said Rosita, with unruffled good humour, “and

if ever you are in trouble come here and I will take you in. I would

even lend you money, and if you knew me you would know how much I loved

you to do that. There is not another person living I would give a five

cent piece to.”

* * * * *

When Patience reached the sidewalk she filled her lungs with fresh air,

then looked at her watch. It was only a half after twelve, and she

decided to call on Mary Gallatin. She had never yet paid that charming

young fashionette the promised morning call, although she had attended

one or two of her afternoon receptions.

She told the coachman to drive to the house in Fifty-seventh Street,

then threw herself back on the seat and laughed, a long unpleasant

laugh. She tapped first one foot and then the other, with increasing

nervousness.

“What fools we mortals be to cry for the unattainable,” she said,

addressing the little mirror opposite. “Probably that young newspaper

woman envies me bitterly. So, doubtless, do many others. Why on earth am

I longing for what I’ll never find, instead of making the best of a bad

bargain and the most of my position? I think I’ll find my way out of the

difficulty with the average woman’s solution: I’ll take a lover.”

The carriage stopped before a house with the breadth of stoop which in

New York means plentiful wealth. She waited in the drawing-room while

the cautious butler went up to see if his mistress would receive this

stranger. He returned in a moment and conducted her up to a door at the

front of the house. Patience entered a large room whose light was so

subdued that for a moment she could see only vaguely outlined forms.

“Oh, Mrs. Beverly, how dear of you,” cried a sweet voice, and Patience

groped her way round the angle of a large bed and saw Mrs. Gallatin

sitting against a mass of pillows. “I’m so glad you came this morning.

I’m feeling so blue. I’ve twisted my foot, you know, and my friends are

so kind to me. Mr. Rutger, give Mrs. Peele a chair. Mrs. Beverly, you

know Mr. Rutger and Mr. Maitland and Mr. Owen, do you not? There is

Leontine.”

The three young men, who had risen as she entered, bowed and resumed

their seats. Mrs. Lafarge threw her a kiss from the depths of a chair by

the fire.

Patience sat down and glanced about her while Mrs. Lafarge finished an

anecdote she had been telling. Her eyes became accustomed to the light,

and in a moment she saw things quite distinctly. The large room was

furnished in Empire style, the walls and windows and the great mahogany

and brass bedstead covered with crimson satin damask. There were only a

few pieces of heavy furniture, in the room, but like the bed they were

magnificent. Each brass carving told a different story.

Mrs. Gallatin, smiling, exquisite, wore a cambric gown, less elaborate

than Rosita’s but more dainty. Her shining hair was drawn modishly to

the top of her head and confined with a pink porcelain comb, carved into

semblance of wild roses. A pink silk shawl slipped from her shoulders.

Another wild rose was at her throat. On her hands she wore rubies only.

The story Mrs. Lafarge told was slightly naughty, and all laughed

heartily at its conclusion. Patience had heard too many naughty stories

in the last two years to be shocked; but when one of the young men began

another he was promptly hissed down.

“You are not going to tell that before Mrs. Beverly,” said Mary

Gallatin. “She is quite too frightfully proper. But we’re awfully fond

of her all the same,” and she patted Patience’s hand while her lovely

young face contracted in a charming scowl. Patience wondered if she had

a lover—Mr. Gallatin was a dapper little man—and if that was why she

looked so happy. She glanced speculatively at the men, and wondered if

she could fall in love with one of them. But they were very ordinary New

York youths of fashion, high of shoulder, slow of speech, large of

epiglottis, vacuous of expression. She shook her head unconsciously.

“Why, what on earth are you thinking about?” cried Mrs. Gallatin, with

her silvery laugh. “That wasn’t a shake of disapproval, was it?”

“Oh, no, no!” said Patience, hastily. “Something occurred to me, and I

forgot I was not alone. You see, I am so much alone that I’ve even

gotten into the habit of thinking out loud.” She felt that she was a

restraint—the suppressed young man had relapsed into moody

silence—and, as soon as she reasonably could, rose to go. Mrs. Gallatin

kissed her warmly and Mrs. Lafarge came forward and kissed her also; but

Patience detected a faint note of relief in their voices, and went

downstairs feeling more depressed than ever. “There seems to be no place

for me,” she thought. “I must be out of tune with everything.”

She went to her father-in-law’s house in Eleventh Street and found Mrs.

Peele and Honora gowned for expected luncheon guests. The former

apologised coldly for not being able to ask her to join them, but “there

was only room in the dining-room for eight.” Honora rippled regret, and

Patience felt that she should disgrace herself with tears if she did not

get out of the house. She went directly to the station, intending to

return home, but as the train approached Peele Manor she turned her back

squarely on the old house and decided to go on to Mariaville and see

Miss Beale. She remembered with satisfaction that she knew at least one

wholesome thoroughly sincere woman, however misguided.

When she reached the station she concluded to walk to the house. She

felt nervous and excited. Her cheeks burned and her temples ached a

little. She had taken no nourishment that day but a cup of coffee and a

roll, and her head felt light. It was now two o’clock.

When she had gone a little more than half way she lifted her eyes and

saw Miss Beale coming toward her with beaming face, one hand ready to

wave.

“Why, Patience!” she cried, as they met. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m

just going to kiss you if it is on the street. I can’t say I thought

you’d forgotten me, for you’ve sent me money for my poor every time I

begged for it; but I did think you’d never come to see me.”

* * * * *

Patience had no excuse to offer, so wisely attempted none, but returned

Miss Beale’s embrace heartily. The older woman’s face was brilliant with

pleasure.

“Dear me, how pretty you have grown! What a colour! I’m so glad to see

you looking so well. How happy dear Miss Tremont would be to see you

now. She was always afraid you would be delicate. But we can’t wish her

back, can we, Patience?”

“There’s no use wishing anything undone. Where are you going?”

“Where I am going to take you. Now, don’t ask any questions, but just

come along.”

Patience, hoping that the destination was a fair where she could get

luncheon, followed submissively, and evaded Miss Beale’s personal

inquiries as best she could.

“How does the Temperance Cause get on?” she asked at length.

“Oh, just the same! Just the same!” said Miss Beale, with a cheerful

sigh. “One makes slow progress in this wicked world; all we can do is to

trust in the Lord and do our humble best. Mariaville has three new

saloons, and the father of one of my scholars beat him nearly to death

the other day for coming to the Loyal Legion class; but we’ll win in the

end.”

“Meanwhile are you as much interested as ever?” asked Patience,

curiously.

“Oh, my!” Miss Beale gave an almost hilarious laugh. “Well, I should

think so. How could I ever lose interest in the Lord’s work? Why, I

never even get discouraged.”

“It has occurred to me, sometimes—since I have been away and met all

sorts of people—that if you really were Temperance you might have more

chance of success.”

“If we were what?”

“Temperance in the actual meaning of the word. You’re not, you know;

you’re teetotalists. That is the reason you antagonise so many thousands

of men who might be glad to help you with their vote otherwise. The

average gentleman—and there are thousands upon thousands of him—never

gets drunk, and enjoys his wine at dinner and even his whiskey and

water. He doesn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t have it, and there

isn’t any. It adds to the pleasures of life. Those are the people that

really represent Temperance, and naturally they have no sympathy with a

movement that they consider narrow-minded and an unwarrantable

intrusion.”

Miss Beale shook her head vigorously. “It is a sin to touch it!” she

exclaimed, “and sooner or later they will all be drunkards, every one of

them. The blessing of God is not on alcohol, and it should be banished

from the face of the earth.”

Patience was in a perverse and almost ugly mood. “Tell me,” she said,

“how do you reconcile your animosity to alcohol with the story of

Christ’s turning the water into wine at the wedding feast?”

“It wasn’t wine,” said Miss Beale, triumphantly; “it was grape juice.

Wine takes days to ferment, so the water couldn’t possibly have become

wine all in a minute.”

Patience burst into laughter. “But, Miss Beale, it was a miracle anyhow,

wasn’t it? If he could perform a miracle at all it would have been as

easy to make wine out of water as grape juice.”

Miss Beale shook her head emphatically and set her lips. “I _know_ that

the Lord never would have offered wine to anybody; but grape juice is

delightful, and he probably knew it, and they called it wine. That is

all there is to it.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Patience, forgetting the Temperance question, as Miss

Beale turned into a path and walked toward the side entrance of the

First Presbyterian Church, “are we going here?”

“Yes, this is just where we are going. There is a special meeting of the

Y’s and Christian Endeavourers of Mariaville and White Plains and two or

three other places. Ah! I’ve caught you now, you naughty girl.”

Patience turned away her face and frowned heavily. All her old dislike

of religion, almost forgotten during the past two years, surged up above

the impulsion of her fermenting spirit. She felt the old impatience, the

old intolerance.

“Do you want me to go in there?” she asked. “I came to see you.”

“Oh, you’re not going to get out of it,” cried Miss Beale, gayly. “And I

know you better than you know yourself. I know you always wanted to give

yourself to the Lord, only you are too proud.”

Patience stared at her, wondering if she had so far forgotten herself as

to indulge in a little joke at the expense of her idols; but Miss Beale

was looking at her with kind, earnest eyes. Patience laughed, and

shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, I’ll go in to please you; but I hope it won’t be too long, for

I’m horribly hungry.”

“Dear, dear! Why didn’t you come a little earlier? But it won’t be more

than two hours, and then I’ll have a hot luncheon prepared for you.”

She led Patience through the large church parlour and straight up to a

table, lifting a chair as she passed the front row of seats.

“I don’t want to sit here,” whispered Patience, hurriedly; but Miss

Beale pushed her into the chair, and seated herself beside her, at the

back of the table.

“I am going to preside, and you are the guest of honour,” she said.

“Young ladies,” she continued, smiling at the rows of bright and serious

faces, “I am sure you will all be glad to see Patience again. I know she

is glad to see you.”

Patience arose and bowed awkwardly, then sat down and tapped the floor

with her foot. The young women looked surprised and pleased. One and all

smiled encouragingly, sure that she had been converted at last. Many of

the faces were bright with youth and even mischief; others were careworn

and aging. Not one of them but looked happy.

Patience under her calm exterior began to seethe and mutter once more.

Once she almost laughed aloud as she thought of the effect upon these

simple-minded girls if the hell within her were suddenly made manifest.

The meeting opened at once. Miss Beale offered a prayer, in which she

implored that they all might love the Lord the more. Hymns were sung,

the Bible read, and reports by the various secretaries and treasurers.

Then one serious and not unintelligent-looking woman of thirty read a

platitudinous paper beginning: “Some one has said, ‘The time will come

when it will be the proudest boast of every man and woman to say “I am

an American.”’ I say that the time will come when it will be the

proudest boast of every man and woman to say, ‘I am a Christian.’”

All regarded the reader with eyes of affection and approval. Each word

Patience, in her abnormal state of mind, took as a personal insult to

Intellect. She felt furiously resentful that in this Nineteenth Century

with its educational facilities, its libraries full of the achievements

of great masters of thought, there should be so low a standard of

intellectuality in the middle classes. Even the fashionable women,

frivolous as they were, were brighter, and keener to pierce outworn

traditions. They might not be thinkers, but they had a species of

lightning in their brain which rent superstition and gave them

flashlight glimpses of life in its true proportions.

The girls began to give experiences. One had just joined the Y’s, and

she related with tears the story of her struggle between the World and

the Church, and her thankfulness that at last she had been permitted to

decide in favour of the Lord. Patience remembered her as the vapid

daughter of rather wealthy parents who in her own day had been devoted

to society and young men. She was very faded. Many of the girls wept in

sympathy, and Miss Beale mopped her eyes several times.

An extremely pretty girl stood up, a girl with black hair and pale blue

eyes and rich pink colour. Patience regarded her satirically, thinking

what a beauty she would be if properly gowned. Miss Beale, noting her

interest, patted her hand and smiled.

“I just want to say,” began the girl, with deep earnestness, “that every

day of my life I have greater confidence that the Lord loves me and

hears what I ask Him. You know that I write the reports of the Y. W. C.

T. U., and of course I have to get them printed for nothing. So when I

sit down to write them I just ask the Lord to tell me what to say and

how to say it, and all the way to the office I keep asking Him to tell

me what to say to the editor so that he will print it and help our great

cause along. And, girls, he prints it every time, and only yesterday he

said to me: ‘I like your stuff because it’s direct and to the point, no

gush, no rhetoric—it’s plain horse sense.’ Now, girls, you need not

think I say that to compliment myself. I just say it to prove that the

Lord writes those newspaper articles, not I.”

Patience put her handkerchief to her face and shook convulsively. She

bit her lips to keep from laughing aloud; she wanted to scream.

Suddenly she became conscious of a deep murmur. Supposing it to be of

disapproval, she straightened her mouth and dropped her handkerchief;

but her face was scarlet, her eyes full of tears. The girls were leaning

forward, regarding her earnestly. Miss Beale leaned over and placed her

arm about her.

“Speak,” she said softly. “Don’t be afraid.”

“What on earth are you thinking about?” gasped Patience.

“Tell us what is in your heart,” said Miss Beale, in a tremulous voice.

And, “Tell us! Tell us!” came from the girls.

“You don’t know what you are saying,” said Patience, freeing herself

angrily. “Let me go.” She was trembling with excitement. Her head felt

very light. The blood was pounding in her ears. She started to her feet,

meaning to rush to the door; but Miss Beale was too quick for her. She

caught her firmly by the waist and led her to the middle of the space at

the head of the room.

“I know she will speak,” said Miss Beale. “Patience, we all feel our

awful responsibility. If you speak out now, you will be saved. If your

timidity overcomes you, you may go hence and never hear His knock

again.”

“Speak! Speak!” came with solemn emphasis from the Y’s.

“Oh, well, I’ll speak,” cried Patience. “And suppose you hear me out. It

will be only polite, since you have forced me to speak. You have always

misunderstood me. I am by no means indifferent to the God you worship. I

have the most exalted respect and admiration for this tremendous

creative force behind the Universe, a respect so great that I should

never presume to address him as you do in your funny little egoism. Do

you realise that this magnificent Being of whose essence you have not

the most approximate idea, is the Creator, not only of this but of

countless other worlds and systems, and furthermore of the psychic and

physical laws that govern them and of the extraordinary mystery of which

we are a part, and which has its most subtle expression in the Space

surrounding us? And yet you, atoms, pigmies, tiny individual

manifestations of a great correlative force called human nature, you

presume to address this stupendous Being, and stand up and kneel down

and talk to It, to imagine that It listens to your insignificant

wants,—that It writes newspaper articles! Is it Christianity that has

destroyed the sense of humour in its disciples?

“In each of you is a shaft from the great dominating Force—that is

quite true, and it is for you to develop that force—character—and rely

upon it, not upon a spiritual lover, as weak women do upon some

unfortunate man. What good does all this religious sentimentality do

you? Your brains are rotting. You have nothing to talk about to

intelligent men. No wonder the men of small towns get away as soon as

they can, and seek the intelligent women of lower strata. Men are

naturally brighter than women, and girls of your sort deliberately make

yourselves as limited and colourless as you can. Go, make yourselves

companions for men, if you would make the world better, if you must

improve the human race. Study the subjects that interest them, that fill

their life; study politics and the great questions of the day, that you

may lead them to the higher ethical plane on which nature has placed

you. Quit this erotic sentimentalising over an abstract being to whom

you must be the profoundest joke of his civilisation—”

“Hush!” shrieked Miss Beale. For some moments Patience had been obliged

to raise her voice above the angry mutterings of her audience. One or

two were sobbing hysterically. Miss Beale’s cry was the signal for the

explosion of pent-up excitement.

“Go! Go!” cried the girls. “Go out of this church! Blasphemer! Shame!

Shame!”

Patience looked out undaunted upon the sea of flushed angry faces, which

a few moments before had been all peace and love. She shrugged her

shoulders, bowed to Miss Beale, who was staring at her with horrified

eyes in a livid face, and walked toward the door. The girls pressed her

forward, lest she should speak again.

“We have a right as churchwomen to hate you,” cried one, “for we are

told to hate the devil, and you are he incarnate.”

Patience refused to accelerate her steps, but reached the door in a

moment. As she was about to pass out a joyous face was uplifted to hers.

It belonged to a girl still sitting. Her lap was piled with loose sheets

of paper. There was an excited smirch of lead on her cheek. Even as she

raised her head and spoke she continued writing. “That was a corker,”

she whispered, “the biggest story I’ve had in weeks.” It was Miss

Merrien.

XVII

Patience was an early riser, and had usually read the “Day” through

before Beverly lounged downstairs, sleepy and cross and masculine. On

the morning after her day of varied experience she took the newspaper

into the library and read the first page leisurely, as was her habit.

The news of the world still interested her profoundly. Then she read the

editorials, and, later, glanced idly at the headlines of the “stories.”

The following arrested her startled eye:

AN EARTHQUAKE IN MARIAVILLE!

THE GOOD PEOPLE ARE OUTRAGED!

A SENSATION BY THE BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT

MRS. BEVERLY PEELE!

The story covered two thirds of a column. Patience read it three times

in succession without stopping to comment. It was graphically told, much

exaggerated, and as carefully climaxed as dramatic fiction. And it was

interesting reading. Patience decided that if it had not been about

herself she should have given it more than passing attention. Her beauty

and grace and elegance, her grand air, were described with enthusiasm.

Every possible point of contrast was made to the serious and

unfashionable Y’s.

At first Patience was horrified. She wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Peele

would say. Beverly’s comments were not within the limitations of doubt.

“I’m in for it,” she thought. Then she smiled. She felt the same thrill

she had experienced when the men looked askance at her after her assault

upon her mother. The Ego ever lifts its head at the first caress, and

quickly becomes as insatiable as a child for sweets. Patience glanced at

the article to note how many times her name—in small capitals—sprang

forth to meet her eyes. She imagined Bourke reading it, and Mrs.

Gallatin, and Mrs. Lafarge, and many others, and wondered if strangers

would find it interesting; then, suddenly, she threw back her head and

laughed aloud.

“What fools we mortals be!” she thought. “And the President of the

United States has dozens of paragraphs written about him every day. And

actors and writers are paragraphed _ad nauseam_. If a woman is run over

in the street she has a column, and if she goes to a hotel and commits

suicide, she has two, and is a raving beauty. Rosita is persecuted for

stories. The Ego ought to have its ears boxed every morning, as some

old-fashioned people switch their children. Well, here comes Beverly.”

Her husband entered, and for the first time in many months she sprang to

her feet and gave him a little peck on his cheek. He was so surprised

that he forgot to pick up the newspaper, and followed her at once into

the dining-room. During the meal she talked of his horses and his farm,

and even offered to take a drive with him. He was going to White Plains

to look at some blooded stock which was to be sold at auction, and

promptly invited her to accompany him; but her diplomacy had its limits,

and she declined. However, he went from the table in high good humour.

When she left him in the library, a few moments later, he was arranging

the scattered sheets of the “Day,” without his accustomed comments upon

“the infernal manner in which a woman always left a newspaper.”

Patience went up to her room and wrote a note of apology to Miss Beale.

She was half way through a long letter to Hal when she heard Beverly

bounding up the stair three steps at a time.

“The cyclone struck Peele Manor at 10.25,” she said, looking at the

clock. “Sections of the fair—”

Beverly burst in without ceremony.

“What the hell does this mean?” he cried, brandishing the newspaper. His

dilating nostrils were livid. The rest of his face was almost black.

“Beverly, you will certainly have apoplexy or burst a blood vessel,”

said his wife, solicitously. “Think of those that love you and preserve

yourself—”

“Those that love me be damned! The idea of my wife—_my wife_—being the

heroine of a vulgar newspaper story! Her name out in a headline! Mrs.

Beverly Peele! My God!”

“God was the cause of the whole trouble,” said Patience, flippantly. “I

thought the young women were entirely too intimate with him. The

spectacle conjured of The Almighty with his sleeves rolled up grinding

out copy at five dollars per column was too much for me. I have the most

profound admiration and respect for the Deity, and felt called upon to

defend him—the others seemed so unconscious of insult—”

“This is no subject for a joke,” cried Beverly, who had sworn steadily

through these remarks. “I don’t care a hang if you had a reason or not

for making a public speech—Christ!—it’s enough that you made it, that

your name’s in the paper—my wife’s name! What will my father and mother

say?”

“They will not swear. A few of the Peeles are decently well bred.”

“No one ever gave them cause to swear before. You’ve turned this family

upside down since you came into it. You’ve been the ruin of my life. I

wish to God I’d never seen you.”

“I sincerely wish you hadn’t. What had you intended to make of your life

that I have interfered with?”

“If I’d married a woman who loved me I’d have been a better man.”

“I wonder how many weak men have said that since the world began! You

were twenty-six when I married you, and I cannot see that there has been

any change in kind since, although there certainly is in degree. If you

had married the ordinary little domestic woman, you would have been

happier, but you would not have been better, for you possess neither

soul nor intelligence. But I am perfectly willing to give you a chance

for happiness. Give me my freedom, and look about you for a doll—”

“Do you mean to say that you want a divorce?”

“I think you know just how much I do.”

“Well, you won’t get it—by God! Do you understand that? You’ve no

cause, and you’ll not get any.”

“There should be a law made for women who—who—well, like myself.”

Her husband was incapable of understanding her. “Well, you just remember

that,” he said. “You don’t get a divorce, and you keep out of the

newspapers, or you’ll be sorry,” and he slammed the door and strode

away.

A quarter of an hour after Patience heard the wheels of his cart. At the

same time the train stopped below the slope. A few moments later she saw

Miss Merrien come up the walk. The maid brought up the visitor’s card,

and with it a note from Mr. Field.

DEAR MRS. BEVERLY [it read],—Forgive me—but you are a woman of

destiny, or I haven’t studied people sixty years for nothing. I

chose to be the first—the scent of the old war-horse for news,

you know. Peele will be furious, but I can’t bother about a

trifle like that. Just give this young woman an interview, and

oblige your old friend

J. E. F.

Patience started to go downstairs, then turned to the mirror and

regarded herself attentively. She looked very pretty, remarkably so, as

she always did when the pink was in her cheeks; but her morning gown was

plain and not particularly becoming. She changed it, after some

deliberation, for a house-robe of pearl grey silk with a front of pale

pink chiffon hanging straight from a collar of cut steel. The maid had

brought her some pink roses from the greenhouse; she fastened one in the

coil of her soft pale hair. Then she smiled at her reflection, shook out

her train, and rustled softly down the stair.

Miss Merrien exclaimed with feminine enthusiasm as she entered the

library.

“Oh, you are the loveliest woman to write about,” she said. “I do a lot

of society work; and I am so tired of describing the conventional

beauty. And that gown! I’m going to describe every bit of it. Did it

come from Paris?”

“Yes,” said Patience, amused at her immediate success. “My mother-in-law

brought it to me last summer—but perhaps you had better not mention

Mrs. Peele in your story.”

“Well, I won’t, of course, if you don’t want me to. I have written the

story about La Rosita for the Sunday ‘Day,’ and I did not hint at your

identity. It made a good story, but not as good as the one about you.

Mr. Field wrote me a note this morning, complimenting me, and told me to

come up here and interview you. I hope you don’t mind very much.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea whether I do or not. How do you do it?”

“Well, you see, I’ll just ask you questions and you answer them, and

I’ll put it all down in shorthand, and then when I go to the office I’ll

thresh it into shape. You can be sure that I won’t say anything that

isn’t pleasant, for I really never admired any one half so much.”

“Very well, you interview me, and then I’ll interview you. I have some

questions to ask also.”

“I’ll tell you anything you like. This story, by the way, is to be in

the Sunday issue on the Woman’s Page. Now we’ll begin. Were you always

an unbeliever? Tell me exactly what are your religious opinions.”

“Oh, dear me! You are not going to write a serious analysis of me?”

“Yes, but I’ll give it the light touch so that it won’t bore anybody. It

is to be called ‘A Society Woman Who Thinks,’ and will be read with

interest all over America.”

“But I am not a society woman.”

“Well, you’re a swell, and that’s the same thing, for this purpose

anyhow. The Gardiner Peeles are out of sight, and I have heard lots of

times how beautifully you entertain in summer and how charmingly you

gown yourself. Tell me first—what do you think of this everlasting

woman question? I hate the very echo of the thing, but we’ll have to

touch on it.”

“Oh, I haven’t given much thought to it, except as a phase of current

history. One thing is positive, I think: we must adjust our individual

lives without reference to any of the problems of the moment,—Womanism,

Socialism, the Ethical Question, the Marriage Question, and all the

others that are everlasting raging. He that would be happy must deal

with the great primal facts of life—and these facts will endure until

human nature is no more. Moreover, however much she may reason, nothing

can eradicate the strongest instinct in woman—that she can find

happiness only through some man.”

“Good,” said Miss Merrien. “I’d have thought the same thing if I’d ever

had time. Now tell me if you have any religion at all.”

“I suppose I should be called an anarchist. Don’t be alarmed: I mean the

philosophical or spiritual anarchist, not these poor maniarchists that

are merely an objectionable variety of lunatics. The religious situation

is this, I think: Jesus Christ does not satisfy the intellectual needs

of the Nineteenth Century. And yet, indisputably, the religionists are

happier than the multiplying scores that could no more continue in the

old delusion than they could worship idols or torture the flesh.

Civilisation needs a new prophet, and he must be an anarchist,—one who

will teach the government of self by self, the government of man’s

nature by will, which in its turn is subservient to the far seeing

brain. Human nature is anarchic in its essence. The child never was born

that was brought to bend to authority without effort. We are still

children, or we should not need laws and governments.”

“Wait till I get that down.”

“Of course these are only individual opinions. I don’t claim any value

for them, and should never have thought of airing them if you hadn’t

asked me. For my part I’m glad I live in this imperfect chaotic age.

When we can all do exactly as we please and won’t even remember how to

want to do anything wrong—Awful!”

“But you said the advanced thinkers needed this new religion to make

them happy.”

“Their happiness will consist in the tremendous effort to reach the

difficult goal. That will take centuries, just as the spiritualised

socialism of Jesus Christ has taken twenty centuries, and only

imperfectly possessed one third of the globe. When anarchy is a cold

hard fact—well, I suspect the anarchists will suddenly discover that

_ennui_ is in their vitals, and will gently yawn each other to death.

Then the tadpoles will begin over again; or perhaps there will then be

mental and moral developments that we in our present limitations cannot

conceive. Haven’t you had enough?”

“No, no. I’ve a dozen questions more.”

Miss Merrien, like all good newspaper reporters, was an amateur lawyer

and a harmless hypnotist. In an hour she had extracted Patience’s views

of society, books, dress, public questions, and the actors in the great

national theatre, the Capitol at Washington.

“Oh, this is magnificent,” she announced, when the pages had been

folded. “Now can I look at the house?”

“We will have luncheon first. No, don’t protest. I am delighted. Mr.

Peele is away for the day, otherwise I fear you would not have had this

interview.”

“Oh, you don’t believe in the submission of wives, then?”

“I’ve never thought much about it,” said Patience, indifferently. “There

is too much fuss made about it all. When a man commands his wife to do a

thing she does not care to do, and when a woman does what she knows will

displease her husband, it is time for them to separate.”

“Oh, that is too simple. It wouldn’t do to reduce the woman question to

a rule of three. What would all the reformers do? And the poor polemical

novelists! Oh, these are the famous portraits, I suppose?”

“You can look at them if the luncheon is bad,” said Patience, as they

took their seats at table. “I’m not a very good housekeeper, although I

actually did take some lessons of Miss Mairs. And sometimes I forget to

order luncheon. I did to-day.”

But the luncheon proved to be a very good one, and Miss Merrien did it

justice, while Patience explained the portraits. Afterward she showed

her guest over the lower part of the house. Then they went back to the

library, and Patience had her interview.

“Tell me exactly how does a woman begin on a newspaper?” she asked.

“Oh, different ones have different experiences,” said Miss Merrien,

vaguely. “Sometimes you have letters, and are put on as a fashion or

society reporter, or to get interviews with famous women, or to go and

ask prominent people their opinion on a certain subject—for a

symposium, you know; like ‘What Would You do if You Knew that the World

was to End in Three Days?’ or, ‘Is Society Society?’ I have written

dozens of symposiums. Sometimes you do free-lance work, just pick up

what you can and trust to luck to catch on. But of course you must have

the nose for news. I was at a matinée one day and sat in front of two

society women. Between the acts they talked about a prominent woman of

their set who was getting a divorce from her husband so quietly that no

newspaper had suspected it. They also joked about the fact that her

lawyer was an old lover. I knew this was a tip, and a big one. I wrote

all the names on my cuff, and before the matinée was over I was down at

the ‘Day’ and had turned in my tip to the City editor. He sent a

reporter to the lawyer to bluff him into admitting the truth. The next

day we had a big story, and after that the editor gave me work

regularly.”

“How much do you make a week?”

“Sometimes forty, sometimes not twenty; but I average pretty well and

get along. Still, when you have to lay by for sickness and vacations,

and put about one half on your back it doesn’t amount to much. You see,

a newspaper woman must dress well, must make a big bluff. If she doesn’t

look successful she won’t be, to say nothing of the fact that she

couldn’t get inside a smart house if she looked shabby. And then she’s

got to eat good nourishing food, or she never could stand the work. Of

course there’s got to be economy somewhere, so I live in a hall bedroom

and make my own coffee in the morning. Still, I don’t complain, for I do

like the work. If I had to go back home I’d ruin the happiness of the

entire family.”

“What do you look forward to?—I mean what ultimate? You don’t want to

be a reporter always, I suppose. Everybody is striving for some top

notch.”

“Oh, maybe I’ll become Sunday editor, or I might fall in with somebody

that wanted to start a woman’s newspaper, or magazine—you never can

tell. There aren’t many good berths for women. Of course there are a

good many very bright newspaper women, and it’s a toss up who goes to

the top.”

“You don’t seem to take matrimony into consideration.”

“Oh, I don’t deny I get so tired sometimes that I’d be only too glad to

have a man take care of me. I guess we all look forward to that, more or

less. I think I’d always work, but not so hard. It would make all the

difference in the world if you knew some one else was paying the bills.

And then, you see, we go to pieces in eight or ten years. A man is good

for hard newspaper work until he’s forty, but we women are made to be

taken care of, and that’s a fact. We take turns having nervous

prostration. I haven’t had it yet, but I’m looking cheerfully forward to

it.”

“Now I want to tell you,” said Patience, “that I am going to be a

newspaper woman.”

“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Peele! Excuse me, but you belong here. Your rôle is

that of the châtelaine in exquisite French gowns and an air half of

languor, half of pride. You were not made for work.”

“That is very pretty, but I suspect you don’t want to lose me for copy.”

“Well, I don’t deny it. I wish you’d keep the ball rolling, and give me

a story a month.”

“I’m afraid I’ve given you my last. In a week or two I shall be a

châtelaine in a pink and grey gown no longer, but a humble applicant for

work in Mr. Field’s office.”

“Is it possible that you mean it?”

“Do I look as if I were joking?”

“You don’t look unhappy—Pardon me—but—but—does he beat you?”

“Oh, no,” said Patience, laughing outright, “he doesn’t beat me. I have

better grounds for desertion than that. Do you think you would do me a

favour? I shall have to slip away. He would never let me go with a

trunk. I am going to ask you to let me send you a box of things every

few days. That will excite no comment among the servants, as we are

always sending clothes to the poor. May I?”

“Of course you may. I’ll do everything I can to help you. But—I can’t

imagine you out of this environment. Don’t you hate to give it up,—all

this luxury, this ease, this atmosphere?”

“Yes, I like it all. I’m a sybarite, fast enough. But I’ve weighed it

all in the balance, and Peele Manor stays up. I have a hundred dollars

or so, and that will last me for a time. I’ll give it to you to take

care of for me. I never was wealthy, but I have no idea of economy. I

don’t think I should like a hall room though. Are the others so very

expensive?”

“They are if you have a good address, and that’s very important. And you

want to be in a house with a handsome parlour.”

“I have no friends,—none that will come to see me.”

“Oh, you’ll make friends. You’re an awfully sweet woman. I can’t bear to

think—Well, there’s no use saying any more about it. I expect you’re

the sort that knows your own mind. I should like to keep on seeing you a

great lady, but if you can’t be a happy one I suppose you are right.

Well, I’ll stand by you through thick and thin, and I’ll show you the

ropes. Now I must get back to the office and work up my story. Here’s my

address. There’s a spare room on the floor above mine. If you’re in dead

earnest I’d better take it right away; then I can unpack your things and

hang them up. But—but—do you really mean it?”

“Of course I do.”

“You know Mr. Field personally, don’t you?”

“Very well, indeed; and he told me when I was sixteen that he should

make a newspaper woman of me.”

“Oh, well, then, you’ll have a lot of push, and your road won’t be as

hard as some—not by a long shot. About six out of every ten newspaper

women either go to the wall or to the bad. It is a mixture of knack and

pluck as much as brains that carries the favoured minority through. You

have brains and pluck, and you’ll have push, so you ought to get there.

About the knack of course I can’t tell. Good-bye.”

XVIII

The evening mail brought from Mrs. Peele to her son a note which he read

with a rumbling accompaniment, then tossed to Patience.

“Do you intend to permit your wife to disgrace your family?” it

read. “If I had my way that abominable paper, the ‘Day,’ should

never enter this house—nor any other paper that dealt in

personalities. I literally writhe every time I see my name—your

father’s honoured name—in the society columns. You may, then,

perhaps, imagine my feelings when your father handed me the

‘Day’ this morning with his finger on that outrageous column. He

was speechless with wrath, and will personally call Mr. Field to

account. I am in bed with a violent headache, in consequence,

and dictating this letter to Honora. But although I deeply feel

for you, my beloved son, I must _insist_ that you assert your

authority with your wrong-headed wife and command her to refrain

from disgracing this family. I don’t wish to reproach you, but I

cannot help saying that it is _always_ a dangerous experiment to

marry beneath one. This girl is not one of us, she never can be;

for, not to mention that we know nothing whatever of her family,

she comes from that dreadful savage _new_ Western country. In

spite of the fact that she has been clever enough to

superficially adapt herself to our ways, I always knew that she

would break out somewhere—I always said so to Honora. But I

don’t wish to add to your own sorrow. I know how you, with all

your proud Peele reserve, must feel. Only, my son, use your

authority in the future.”

Patience finished this letter with a disagreeable lowering of the brows.

She made no comment, however, but opened a book and refused to converse

with her husband.

On Sunday morning she found three columns on the Woman’s Page of the

“Day” devoted to her beauty, her intellect, her gowns, and her opinions.

It was embellished with a photograph of Peele Manor and a sketch of

herself, which Miss Merrien had evidently made from memory. When Beverly

came down she handed the newspaper to him at once, to read the story

with the raw temper of early morning. She hoped that Mrs. Peele would

read it in similar conditions.

After he had gone through the headlines he let the newspaper fall to the

floor, and stared at her with a face so livid that for a moment she felt

as if looking upon the risen dead. Then gradually it blackened, only the

nostrils remaining white.

“So you deliberately defy me?” he articulated.

“Yes,” she said, watching him narrowly. She thought that he might strike

her.

“You did it on purpose to drive me crazy?”

“I had no object whatever, except that it pleased me to be interviewed.

Understand at once that I shall do exactly as I please in all things.

This is not the country for petty household tyrants. I don’t doubt there

are many men in this world whom I should be glad to treat with deference

and respect if I happened to be married to one of them; but with men

like you there is only one course to take. I have asked you to let me

live abroad. If you consent to this, it may save you a great deal of

trouble in the future; for, I repeat, I shall in all things do exactly

as I choose.”

“We’ll see whether you will or not,” he roared. “You’ll do as I say, or

I’ll lock you up.”

“Oh, you will not lock me up. You are way behind your times, Beverly.

There is no law in the United States to compel me to obey you.”

“I’ll stop your allowance. You’ll never get another cent from me.”

“That has nothing whatever to do with it. Now, I ask you for the last

time, Will you let me travel?”

“No!” he shouted, and he rushed from the room.